


Pay The Piper

by atsammy



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-23
Updated: 2013-03-23
Packaged: 2017-12-06 06:22:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,139
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/732421
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/atsammy/pseuds/atsammy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This unspoken deal would require payment.  Soon.  He never broke a deal, and so he would pay in whatever manner they chose.  And then, so would they.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pay The Piper

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers through 2x17, "Welcome to Storybrooke." 
> 
> This is a scene that they really ought to show, and I have a feeling we will never see it. So, I wrote it myself.
> 
> Thank you Allaine for the beta!

"You did this."

Rumplestiltskin stood there, dagger in one hand and cane in the other, watching while Snow White crumbled. Her Prince Charming wrapped her in his arms and ran with her, out of his shop, away from the heartbroken, crazed woman on his floor and her dead mother. 

There would be a price to pay, for his health. He may not have actually spoken the words, or forced Snow White to kill Cora, but he recognized and accepted the nuances of his suggestion, and that this unspoken deal would require payment. Soon. He never broke a deal, and so he would pay in whatever manner they chose. And then, so would they. 

Because he may have been dying. He may have been growing weaker every second as the poison wound its way through his body, but his senses remained as sharp as they ever were. He heard everything. Everything that Belle didn’t say, everything that lurked in the background. And he knew. He knew that they had not held up their end of the bargain. 

No one broke a deal with him.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

There had been many a moment since he’d awoken from the curse that Rumplestiltskin pondered closing his shop for good. There was little for him to do with it anyway, as the people of the little town even now could not afford to pay the price for the objects they’d given him in return for his aid. But there was a part of him that relished in it, in the knowledge that these people had to pay for their mistakes, as the fulfillment of their requests never turned out exactly as they had planned. Folly.

He had to admit, though, that closing his shop would do nothing to keep people away. The major players in his chess game had no more qualms about barging into his home than they did his shop, no matter what the sign said on the door. 

At any rate, on the day after Regina destroyed her mother's curse, Emma and her father’s sudden appearance just before lunch didn’t surprise him in the slightest. He'd been expecting it sooner, actually, once he'd been informed of certain events outside the Mayor's home the previous evening, events that had him crafting a new plan. He would not be so trusting again, not with his life, or his priorities. 

"Gold, we need to talk."

No shit, he thought acidly to himself as Emma slammed her hands down on the edge of the display case between them, though he remained outwardly calm. 

"And what, may I ask, is the problem now, Sheriff Swan?"

He was intrigued, but not terribly surprised, when David stopped beside her, his arms folded, instead of staying in the background. He really wasn’t adjusting well to losing the mantle of authority, now that his daughter was home. 

"Mary Margaret. Regina’s still after her, you need to do something."

"You'll have to forgive me, but I played my part yesterday." He sneered at them both, and took a step around the case. "I don't need to do anything."

"She ripped my wife's heart out last night!" David interjected, mimicking his daughter's stance. 

"And she put it back, safe and sound. If Snow White's heart has blackened, well, she did that herself. It's not my problem."

"You set her on this path; you owe it to her to fix it!"

"I. Owe. You. _Nothing_ ," he hissed. "We had our deal: protect Snow White from Regina's curse as payment for my life. By Regina's own actions, that deal is now concluded."

He advanced on them, and when Emma's hand reached towards her gun he flung her against the door with barely a thought, and held her there despite her struggles. The gun in David's holster crumbled into dust before he could do more than take a step back towards his daughter. 

"You, on the other hand... You broke a deal with me, and _no one_ breaks a deal with me and gets away with it. Consider this to be the price you pay, for me not killing everyone in this town."

David turned slightly, trying to check on Emma without losing sight on Rumplestiltskin, and the effect would have been comical if not for the rage that was boiling under Rumplestiltskin's skin. "You mean Belle? She’s fine, just like you asked."

"She is NOT fine," he yelled, swinging his cane, just missing David as it smashed through the glass display case. " _Fine_ is not taking a young woman who has spent the last thirty-one years of her life locked in a cell with no memories of anything beyond those four walls, and locking her away in a room in the very same hospital with the very same people who worked for Regina! Fine is not drugging her to keep her quiet! Your 'fine' is exactly what Regina did to her every day from the moment she was kidnapped in our land!"

He advanced on the faux-prince so fast that he fell backwards onto the floor, scraping his hands on broken glass as he scrambled up to block Rumplestiltskin's view of Emma. "Regina and Cora never went near her. She was safe in the hospital, Dr. Whale..." 

"Is a useless pawn who spent the entire curse at Regina's beck and call." He twisted his hand, and the printouts he'd made just that morning at the hospital appeared there in a puff of dark purple smoke. "And your protection," he sneered again, "not only allowed Regina into Belle's room to search her things, they allowed that stranger to record her casting a spell." He thrust the pictures against David's chest, and clutched the handle of his cane. 

He let the power holding Emma to the door subside, and she grabbed at the photos. She shared a horrified look with David, and then they looked back at him.

"Oh, God. Where did you..." she started to ask, shuffling through the images clearly showing Belle's belongings floating in mid-air in front of Regina, Belle unconscious on the bed, and the back of a man with a camera phone hiding behind the partly open door.

"From the security cameras, where do you think," he snapped. "So if I were you, I would be more concerned about the man who last night filmed Regina ripping out your mother's heart, and less about any deal you think you can make with me. Right now, the _only_ thing keeping me from tearing this town apart with a single thought is that Bae is here, and Belle lives. Anyone else will just be collateral damage."

For the first time, Emma looked truly frightened by him. Good, he thought snidely. She needed to learn what happened when monsters were enraged. There was more to worry about in Storybrooke than a queen with a blackened heart.


End file.
